Mexico, 1960
Throughout her career, Cristina Kahlo has tackled different aspects of author photography and documentary photography. At the beginning of her career as a photographer, she made extensive photographic documentation on childhood disability (autism, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy, among others) in different institutions. Throughout her career within Mexican culture, Cristina Kahlo was the founder and director of the Galería Alternativa (1983-1985) and later, in partnership with Juan Coronel Rivera, of the Fotogalería Kahlo-Coronel (1986-1991) in Mexico City. As an independent curator in the area of photography, she has worked for important international museums such as Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany; the Kunsforum in Vienna, Austria; the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, Italy and the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, among others. She has given lectures on photography at the Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico City, UDEM in Monterrey, Mexico; University of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, and the Freie Universität in Berlin, among other institutions. In Mexico, she has been part of the jury and has been a tutor of the Young Creators Program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts.
Exhibitions · Among her documentary photography, her images of the Mixe Musical Training Center in Oaxaca (2006) stand out, as well as the project entitled “Tiempo de Danzón”, for which she photographically documented the communities of danzón dancers in different states of México for over eight years. This exhibition has traveled through the cities of Veracruz, Reynosa, Querétaro, and Oaxaca of the Mexican Republic. This exhibition has also been presented in eight cities in the USA, as well as in Canada and Madrid, Spain. From 2006 to 2010 the author carried out her artistic production between the cities of Basel, Switzerland and Mexico City, derived from the Residency grant from the Bartels Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, presenting her work in European galleries, among which the exhibition titled “Noviembre Dos” exhibited in the cities of Strasbourg, France; at the Broetzinger Art Galerie in Pforzheim and at the Galerie Bode in Karlsruhe, Germany. As a result of months of work in Basel, the exhibition entitled "Tiempo al Juego" was presented in Mexico at the Diego Rivera Mural Museum (2007), as well as in the group exhibition entitled "Transmigrantes, cuatro fotógrafos mexicanos en Europa" presented in France. Argentina and Uruguay.
In the last decade, the photographer has focused her interest in geometry, the concepts of travel and geographical displacement in exhibitions such as “Laboratorio de Ficciones” (2011), “La Mirada del Viajero” (2015), presented at the Bode Galerie in Karlsruhe, Germany and “Marco Polo es Metáfora” (2014), presented at Patricia Conde Galería in Mexico City. Her interest in architecture and her dialogue with light is reflected in exhibitions such as “Revelaciones del Palacio de Bellas Artes” (2014) and “Lo Concreto” (2017).
Another relevant topic in the author's exhibitions is Mexican cultural spaces and their collections. Through visual dialogue between the spectators and the objects contained in museums such as the National Museum of San Carlos, the Museum of Philately of Oaxaca, the Anahuacalli Museum of Mexico City, among others, the photographer invites the visitors to participate actively in these enclosures photographing their gazes, images that are later reinterpreted to create hybrid compositions by merging with the objects of the photographed collections. As a result, exhibitions such as “Convivencias” have been presented at the National Museum of San Carlos (2013), “Convivencias II” (2014) at the San Pablo Cultural Center in Oaxaca, and “Apropiaciones” presented at the Anahuacalli Museum. Recently the series titled “Posthispánico MX” was presented at the Tobe Galerie in Budapest, Hungary as well as at the Bellevue Ört für Fotografie Gallery in Basel, Switzerland in 2018.
In addition to solo and group exhibitions, her work has been featured in art fairs such as ZonaMACO, ZonaMACO Foto in Mexico, Art Karlsruhe in Germany, Dallas Art Fair and Arte Americas in USA, Fotobudapest, and Photo Basel.
Awards · Due to her artistic career, she was awarded the Bartels Foundation Residence scholarship in Basel, Switzerland. For “Tiempo de Danzón” she was awarded the National Prize for the Preservation and Diffusion of the Danzón Rosa Abdala in Visual Arts granted by the Government of Veracruz in 2011.
